i snuck back to the 80's videos site again the other day, just for a minute you understand, and watched the john lennon video, "woman".

no matter your opinion of yoko ono, she must be so grateful that song was written, that in john's gentle farewell to her she could hear those words every couple, no matter how caught up they are in daily routines: budget balancing, car pooling, nappy changing, ego soothing and making time for love - thinks when we take the time...maybe while folding laundry, setting the table, waiting for them to come out of the office or finish a conversation with a colleague:

Woman please let me explain,
I never mean(t) to cause you sorrow or pain,
So let me tell you again and again and again,
I love you (yeah, yeah) now and forever,

not that i am a john and yoko expert, i have always been rather removed from that particular love affair, but what a beautiful gift that song is.

i recently wrote that i was dealing with a painful aspect to an unavoidable relationship. twelve years ago, i would have delighted in antagonising this person who hurt me, in freezing them out painfully, in simply making them no longer exist in my world. (unless they apologised). people that hurt my family really got my ire up, and i didn't have a lot of compassion or room for second chances.

i am not like that any more, and the hurt was coming from knowing i was going to have to see them, and having been instructed by magnificent not to discuss the matter, i didn't. but it still hurt.

and then the other day i realised i don't want someone knowing they have hurt me and i have not forgiven them. i have to take responsibility for half that statement. me, who has been forgiven for so much, needs to forgive. they can still know they have hurt me, and hopefully they do. but i need to forgive. and even odder, i want to.

my love can't just be about the day to day events, "i love how much fun we had together today". i want it to be about the abiding, everlasting love i feel regardless of what we have done. it's not easy...i still sting when i think of the hurt, but wanting to change is the first step towards changing. because one day that person will be gone. maybe not shot by a deranged fan outside their central park flat, but who knows how, or why.

this is a sad world, and a beautiful one. as we get older, as our parents get older, as our realities and responsibilities get bigger, the sadness somehow seems to grow.

i want to be part of the beauty. so instead of sitting here watching the wheel of anger and frustration roll round and round, i just had to, let it go.

Comments

[Tina]

What an amazing sentiment. Beautiful and complicated this adult stuff is.

[Auntie Pammie]

I am racking my brain trying to figure out who that person was that hurt you so bad?
P

[Lori in YK]

You have proven...once again...to be one to make others think hard and question one's own ability to manage the unmanageable.

I myself have in my past been both a hurter and a hurtee. It is perplexing...how do we let it all go...all the hurt and go on with a happy life?

But we do, as grown ups and keepers of our own fate, need to release ourselves and others from the stagnating effects of negative emotion and choose to focus on what is really important in our lives...ourselves, our families and our friends.

Cheers...here's to a lighter heart!